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by Terry Ostmeyer, |
It’s time to step up!
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This issue of GCM features the 2007 winners of the GCSAA/Golf Digest Environmental Leaders in Golf Awards, an impressive display of stewardship at its finest. But, the ELGA spotlight also sheds a glaring reminder on what’s wrong with such well-meaning honors — a lack of participation.
Most of the industry’s superintendents need to light a fire under their collective backsides and join the effort, for the good of their profession as well as their own good.
Only 23 superintendents entered the 2007 ELGA program and more than half of those represented the PGA Tour’s TPC Network, which strongly encourages its superintendents to participate in such programs and rewards them for demonstrating their environmental accomplishments.
I’ve been covering GCSAA’s top environmental honor, first as the Environmental Steward Awards and now the ELGAs, for more than a decade and entries have pretty much been in decline for the last several years. Also, if you’ve been keeping score, most of the same names have been dominating the lists of winners.
Likewise, at the same time, participation in Audubon International’s Cooperative Sanctuary Program has all but stagnated — a steady 15 percent of all U.S. courses are signed up, but only about 3 percent of those have ever achieved certification in the program’s 15 years.
Furthermore, Kevin Fletcher, Audubon’s director of programs and administration, has pointed out that Audubon International research indicates that 95 percent of ELGA participants are also enrolled in the Cooperative Sanctuary program.
Many will argue that most superintendents are doers but non-joiners and as a whole are making their courses as compatible with the environment as they can — it’s just that nobody knows about it. It’s a good argument, backed up by the results of GCSAA’s first national Golf Course Environmental Profile survey (GCM, December 2007) that indicate 96 percent of all U.S. golf facilities say they have made environmental improvements in the last 10 years.
But, you know what? That’s not good enough. The key refrain here is, nobody knows about it. If golf course management is ever really going to rise dramatically, and visibly, above the golf-and-nature fray, it’s going to have to do it en masse, not by riding the coattails of the achievements of a few. It needs to toot its horn by participating in national and international programs and competitions.
The excuse that it costs too much money and expends too much labor is so much poppycock. The roles of winners of GCSAA environmental honors since the early 1990s are filled with big-time results from small-time operations. Heck, the Overall ELGA winner a few years ago was Pat Blum, the superintendent at Colonial Acres, a small-town nine-hole course outside Albany, N.Y. The latest Overall ELGA winner, Chris Gray, runs his public layout in Benton, Ky., on a budget of barely more than $200,000 and a staff of six.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it’s time to sing a new song.
Interested in getting involved in a golf course environmental program? Visit GCSAA (www.gcsaa.org), Audubon International (www.auduboninternational.org), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov/ems/info/elements.htm), Golf Course Environmental Program (www.afcee.brooks.af.mil/ec/golf/), or Environmental Business Solutions (www.epar.com).
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